Video subtitles are essential for a lot of video communicators today – for many reasons! This article will go through some of the reasons why, and offer an easy solution to how you can get started with using video subtitles today.
A change in user behaviour
Media consumption has risen with 20% over the last decade for the average adult. Unsurprisingly, a large part of this increase is due to the introduction of smartphones as over the same period usage has gone up with over 460% – leading to an average screen time of 4,5 hours.
And that’s just for adults who’ve been introduced to smart devices, imagine the same numbers for younger generations who’ve grown up with them!
With this evolution comes new behaviours. The fidelity of smart devices allows you to watch content anywhere, including public spaces. While headphones are very commonplace these days, they’re not always available. And seeing how most people don’t want to be “that” guy on the subway, video content needs to be approachable by other means.
The perks of video subtitles
We’re of course talking about subtitles. Transcribing the dialogue of a video increases the impact of the message in many ways.
Studies have shown not only that a vast majority of video content today is watched muted but that adding subtitles also increases watch time by 80%!
Embedding a video on your website
Let’s say you want to embed a video on your website, and you want as many people as possible to see it. Enabling “autoplay” would help with this, as your visitors are met with a rolling video immediately when they enter your site. However, most browsers are skeptical to autoplayed audio, as it can be disruptive to users’ experience on your website. This is why your “autoplay” setting might be ignored by certain browsers.
To mend this issue, you can make sure that the video starts playing without audio. The browser will then accept your autoplay setting. In this scenario, subtitles are essential to make sure your visitors understand what they’re seeing.
All of these settings are accessible for Qbrick Video Platform users.
Web accessibility
All organisations within the public sector are obligated to follow Web Accessibility Guidelines for their published videos. This includes features within the Video Player they use (See our WCAG compatible Video Player) and usage of subtitles.
The conclusion to this is subtitles have long surpassed the “nice-to-have” metric and is today indeed need-to-have if you want to communicate effectively.
How to add video subtitles to your videos
Creating and adding subtitles can be achieved in many (more or less cumbersome) ways.
With Qbrick you can streamline the process with the use of our automatic transcription service: Speech to text.
Generate subtitles in your spoken language – edit words & timing if needed – and translate your subtitles into other languages. All transcriptions are also searchable in our API.
Get started with video subtitles today.
Or if you already know you want to try it out, and need a personal demo to see it in action – contact us here.
Author
Content creator for Qbrick productions
Andreas Bard (Qbrick Production Team) is a video editor and content creator based in Stockholm.
